Yale responds to Judge Ho

NLJ story here. The school revised its free-expression policies to include three conditions on protesting/disagreeing with a speaker: no blocking access to the event or facility; no disrupting the event and university operations; no compromising the safety of those attending or other members of the community. Dean Gerken sent a letter to the community highlighting the hiring of a new dean of students, the revision to the code of conduct prohibiting surreptitious recording of classes and other school events and activities, and a commitment to students resolving disagreements in-person.

I do not know whether it satisfies Judge Ho's complaints about free speech on campus, which I found disingenuous; they equate protest and criticism of an invited speaker with cancellation or drowning out. Free speech means sit-and-listen and hope the speaker deigns to engage with you or go away; anything else violates free-speech norms. The new policies seem to leave room for that sort of counter-speech so long as they do not "disrupt" or "block access," vague and capacious terms that could create problems if applied too broadly. (For example, a sufficiently large peaceful protest outside a building forces people to navigate a crowd to get inside--I would hope the school does not treat that as prohibited blocking).